Write the activity.info file, to describe your bundle in the activity sub-directory (e.g. HelloWorldActivity.activity/activity/activity.info). The Activity Bundles specification explain in detail the meaning of each field.

Design an icon for your activity, according to the icon format and place it in the activity sub-directory. The file name should match the icon file name specified in the info file (e.g. activity-helloworld.svg).

Code your activity. The name you specified in the .info file as "class" is the name of the class which runs your code. For the activity.info file above, we specify a top-level module named HelloWorldActivity.HelloWorldActivity (please note that the use of uppercase names in module names is considered poor Python style, feel free to use an activity name with more standard style names).

from sugar.activity import activity
import logging
import sys, os
import gtk
class HelloWorldActivity(activity.Activity):
def hello(self, widget, data=None):
logging.info('Hello World')
def __init__(self, handle):
print "running activity init", handle
activity.Activity.__init__(self, handle)
print "activity running"
self.set_title('Hello World')
# Creates the Toolbox. It contains the Activity Toolbar, which is the
# bar that appears on every Sugar window and contains essential
# functionalities, such as the 'Collaborate' and 'Close' buttons.
toolbox = activity.ActivityToolbox(self)
self.set_toolbox(toolbox)
toolbox.show()
# Creates a new button with the label "Hello World".
self.button = gtk.Button("Hello World")
# When the button receives the "clicked" signal, it will call the
# function hello() passing it None as its argument. The hello()
# function is defined above.
self.button.connect("clicked", self.hello, None)
# Set the button to be our canvas. The canvas is the main section of
# every Sugar Window. It fills all the area below the toolbox.
self.set_canvas(self.button)
# The final step is to display this newly created widget.
self.button.show()
print "AT END OF THE CLASS"

Create a MANIFEST (e.g. HelloWorldActivity.activity/MANIFEST), containing the list of the files to include in the package. (Note: Be sure not to leave blank lines at the end of the file.)

Running

If you now run sugar the activity icon should be visible on the frame. (You have to restart sugar to get it to pick up the change if you just installed it. Hit ctrl-alt-erase.)

You can also edit the code in your bundle directory directly. Note that the first time your Activity is launched, it leaves a process around even if you close the window, so you must kill the sugar-activity-factory to get it to reload when you click again.

Distribution

Create a xo package to distribute your bundle. (An xo file is essentially a zip file built from the MANIFEST with some extra metadata, like a JAR file. It also has some localization ability, and in the future we expect to be able to sign these too.) The bundle name is automatically generated from the 'name' and 'activity_version' values found in the activity.info file, separated by a dash, with a .xo extension.